The Asia Championship of Poker (ACOP) is one of the most-liked poker tournaments in the Asia-Pacific region. This year, the ACOP is housed in the PokerStars LIVE Macau poker room. A massive field of 291 players participated in the HK $ 100,000 buy-in Main Event. Actually it shows a significant increase of 43% compared to the previous edition, generating a record prize pool of HK $ 27 million (US$3.5 million). That gigantic amount of cash is to be awarded to the top 31 players of the tournament. Interestingly, the winner will take home a symbolic HK $ 6,3million of prize.

172 players survived at the end of Day 2 with Sorel Mizzi bagging the chip lead. Armed with 439,900 chips heading to the next round, the Canadian poker player has a big chip advantage over all his competitors. His nearest rivals possessing around 300,000 chips in hands are Terry Gonzaga (309,700) and Gabriel Le Jossec (301,800). Day 2 survivors include notable poker players such as Dan Colman, Raymond Wu, Mike McDonald, Dan Smith, Scott Davies, Joseph Cheong, Jack Salter, Terrence Chan, Billy Argyros and Raiden Kan. The other Aussies who failed to qualify for the next round are Philipp Gruissem, Jonathan Duhamel, Toby Lewis, Greg Merson, Tobias Reinkemeier, Shawn Buchanan, Xuan Liu, Winfred Yu and JJ Liu. Among those who found their own runs cut include Australian notables like Joe Hachem, Craig Cockburn, Curly Seal, Jackie Glazier and Jarrad Graham. Day 3 of the Main Event will be played this Thursday afternoon with 172 title contenders.